One of the disciplines that underpins mediation is the benefit that comes from reflecting on how a recent process has run. But it’s a habit that can have much wider benefits.

How well prepared was I? What went well, that I might want to repeat? Is there anything that I can learn and improve for next time? Reflective practice is considerably easier with a colleague to help prompt the thought process and provide constructive challenges to assumptions and conclusions, but it’s valuable to have a few techniques to guide yourself through the process when you’re alone. To do this effectively, it’s important to have ‘wound down’ properly from the process itself, taking the time to clear your mind enough to reflect more objectively on aspects of performance. In view of that, I thought I’d consider a range of events I’ve attended recently that turn out to have had a common theme running through them: mindfulness.

Connecting Sport and Business

There was an excellent Metis Edinburgh session recently, featuring a talk by Tony Stanger. After a career in high performance sports coaching, he has built a business from taking the disciplines and approaches that deliver in high level sport and applying them in a business context. One of his take-home messages was that to be a great leader, and draw the best from your staff, you also need to be a great coach. Through focused coaching, it is possible to embed thinking and approaches that will allow staff to consistently deliver better of themselves and grow their career while making the organisation more adaptable to changing business pressures.

One of the things that struck me after listening to Tony, and taking part in the discussion afterwards, was the overlap between the reflective practice I follow after mediating and the coaching/management approach Tony was encouraging. Alongside my business activities, I also coach High Performance match officials with Scottish Rugby. Much of that coaching builds on instilling a discipline of preparation and self-analysis. My input is primarily to facilitate the referees through that process – planning, problem solving and strategy development – alongside helping them to identify the areas on which they should be focusing and the most effective ways for them to improve and develop.

Stress and work

These approaches, underpinned by mindfulness practices that unblock thought processes, continue to grow in a business context, albeit their focus is primarily on senior managers rather than wider staff. This point was brought home to me at an Institute of Directors session this week, led by the excellent Gillian Dalgliesh, titled “Managing Stress in the Workplace”. Alongside considering the physiology behind stress and anxiety, and the long-term impacts arising from them, we ran through some techniques to manage stress in ourselves and others, many based on being mindful of the relevant sensations and taking action to address the triggers.

Alladale Wilderness Reserve, Sutherland

All of this links neatly back to the increasing awareness and growing use of mindfulness practices for business leaders, bringing me to the retreat I attended on the Alladale Wilderness Reserve in Sutherland a few weeks ago. Organised and hosted by Natural Change, the retreat aims to “help you reconnect with yourself, with others and with nature to explore what matters to you”.

Natural Change Wilderness Retreats are for people who want to make a change in their personal life, in their professional work, in the world around them – or in all three.

The week featured an interesting blend of solo mindfulness techniques, paired facilitated reflection, slow contemplative walking and a more intense “solo” (an afternoon/evening spent alone in a remote part of the glen). For a more rounded view of the week, check out these updates from other attendees James Scipioni and Sarah Williams. For me, I came away with having rediscovered my love of being in remote countryside, and with a better understanding of why that is so good for maintaining my mental health – hence my trip last week to Bidean nam Bian in Glencoe.

Drawing things together

The common thread through all of these paragraphs is the emphasis on slowing down, being more ‘present’ and constructively analysing recent performance. Of course, the key is the “constructive” part of that, something that only really develops with practice.

This is a theme that continues, particularly in relation to conflict/dispute resolution and mediation. The beginning of June sees an event organised by Core Solutions at which Tim Hicks will explore the neural basis of conflict and communication, based on his recently published book on the subject.

As a topic that continues to gain interest, I’d be keen to find out other people’s experience of exercises in mindfulness, centring and grounding – do people find them universally beneficial? Do you find it really effective and helpful? Have you given it a try and moved on because it didn’t work for you? Or does it all seem a bit ‘new age’ to try in the first place?

I spent the second week of April in Tbilisi, Georgia, delivering training on Conciliation of Collective Labour Disputes*. As with all training courses, and journeys to other countries, I learnt a huge amount from the trip, so I thought I’d reflect on the key points through this blog-post.

Vocabulary

I’ve had numerous conversations in recent months about the language used in and around mediation and other alternative forms of dispute resolution. Conciliation and mediation are used interchangeably in Georgia, as they often are in the UK, but in many places around the world they have different meanings. This is something that I have increasingly noticed people find confusing. It gets worse when you start to debate whether or not your style of mediation is facilitative, evaluative or transformative, at which point people not involved in the profession often glaze over while ‘mediation geeks’ get excited about when they might employ each approach.

For my part, I think it would be better, in promoting the use of mediation (and other forms of ADR), for people to use consistent and, by preference, simpler terminology. This is a big enough topic for Scottish Mediation to have committed the whole of their Mediate 2019 conference this November, and titled it The Words We Use. It should be a fascinating discussion, and perhaps we can start to find some consensus.

Mediation as a voluntary process

Participants in the ITCILO Conciliation of Labour Disputes course in Tbilisi, April 2019, complete their final assessments.

A consistent theme raised by the participants in Georgia, many of whom were already experienced practicing mediators, related to the problems they face due to conciliation of collective disputes being a statutory step without which industrial action by a union would be illegal. This means people go into it as a necessary step in escalating their dispute rather than primarily as a means to resolve it. My main experience of compulsory mediation comes through the Employment Tribunal application system and the Scottish Sheriff Courts.

In the former, an applicant to the Tribunal has to go through ACAS Early Conciliation in order to get a code that allows them to complete the online ET application form. When this system was introduced, it was tied to applicants also paying a fee to the Tribunal service. As a result, few respondents (the employer against whom the Tribunal application is raised) had any incentive to engage with the process: regardless of the merits (or lack thereof) of the case, why conciliate when the applicant may not have enough money to submit their claim in the first place? The removal of the fees has resulted in an increasing number of applications people who were inhibited from applying because they couldn’t afford the fee. However, many respondents still seem reluctant to engage with the conciliation, and it’s difficult not to see that as a factor of it simply being part of the process rather than being seen as a genuine opportunity to find a mutually acceptable outcome.

With the Sheriff Courts, I have found many of the parties not yet ready to mediate, but having been ordered to do so. A significant majority have reached a agreement, but this has often involved significant preparatory work so they are better aware of the process they are entering and the opportunity it represents to have some control of the outcome. In such cases, the mediation is, however, genuinely voluntary so provides a real alternative to presenting their case in court with the associated stress, time and costs.

What does ‘success’ look like?

Following on from the above point, some of the mediators in Tbilisi were slightly despondent about their chances of success when starting a mediation. If the conciliation is just “part of the process” what are the chances it can be successful.

It’s tempting to see a successful mediation only as one that ends in agreement, but that’s not always possible, especially with collective disputes where Politics and politics are in play. In that sense, it could be a success to help the parties better understand the nature of the disagreement they’re having. Or to help them identify options for settlement, without them having actually determined any preference between them. Or simply to understand their own needs (as opposed to wants) as well as those of the other party.

Ultimately, the role of the mediator is to help parties on their journey to a mutually acceptable outcome. If that is at the start of the journey, perhaps it is success enough to point people in the right direction, while another mediator, later in the journey, might see them safely home.

Mediation has been around for a long time, and has been used very successfully in many, many situations.

Despite that, many employers have been slow to adopt mediation as an approach, often reluctant to put it in place early enough to prevent some situations becoming intractable. Indeed, it seems to be seen as an option of last resort.

Does this come from a lack of understanding of what mediation is and does? Or is it seen as an unnecessary additional expense? Whatever the reasons, the evidence suggests that it can be extremely successful, at least for those who believe it can be. ACAS research published in 2012 showed mediation to be significantly more successful where an employer genuinely commits to the process. Conversely, it is less effective where an employer is reluctant to use it. It is not unreasonable to conclude, therefore, that the results are to a large extent self-fulfilling prophecies.

The paradox is that the statistics also show that mediation is second only to direct communication in successfully resolving issues between employees.

In many cases, those trying it have done so with internal mediators. While there are clear benefits from in-house mediators, this approach also needs care to avoid individuals perceiving a mediator employed by their company as being less impartial. Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant, the perception is the key to the success of the process, so the results may not be what might have been hoped. As a result, internal mediation may not be the appropriate approach in all cases. Ultimately, the relative costs of employing an external mediator can pale into insignificance compared to the lost productivity that comes from letting a situation persist or deteriorate.

One conclusion was that one poor result can colour an employer’s view of the value of mediation as a whole. However, further ACAS research concluded:

more than four in five (82%) [employers] said it had resolved
the issues either completely or partly

A key benefit of mediation is that there is little to be lost in trying it. In this context, very few independent mediators would hesitate to have a conversation about their approach and to answer any questions that anyone involved might have. It is better for both those involved and their employer to enter with a genuine commitment to find a mutually acceptable outcome or it is less likely to succeed.

If you’d like to know more about the mediation and dispute resolution services offered by Strathesk Resolutions, please e-mail contact@strathesk.co.uk or call Malcolm on 07736068787.

This is Anti-Bullying Week 2018 (#ABW2018), with a series of events, articles and publications aimed at making the problem of bullying something about which we all know more and are better equipped to stop.

These are all aggressive/passive-aggressive actions, but take care also of the “charismatic bully” who may be more difficult to spot:

This type of bully will not rely on physical force to intimidate their targets, but rather will use subtle manipulation to exert their power over others.

In recent months I’ve advised several individual clients, each of whom has experienced bullying at work, on how to tackle the problem. Although they are based in very different parts of the UK, there are key similarities in their situations:

Each knew they weren’t happy with their interaction with their manager;

Each has been exposed to 2 or more of the behaviours mentioned above;

In spite of this, each failed to recognise that they were being bullied.

With smaller employers, many of the problems have arisen from the lack of management structure, but even companies with great policies in place can face problems. In 2 of the cases, the employer is large and has excellent Equalities, Bullying & Harassment and/or Dignity at Work polices. With a bit of guidance on how to pull together and present evidence that their treatment falls outwith those policies, they’ve made real progress towards solving the problem.

Of course, sometimes there’s a deeper problem. I have advised several employers over the years where inappropriate behaviours have become a part of their managerial culture. The reasons behind these behaviours are too many and varied to go into here, but this recent article from Psychology Today provides a pretty useful exploration. And underlying all of this is our ongoing economic and political uncertainty. In 2015, ACAS stated:

as we look ahead to 2016, one finding in our recent paper especially resonates: the strong correlation between restructuring and organisational change and increased rates of workplace bullying.

Now, unless I’m reading the commentary wrong, uncertainty, restructuring and organisational change aren’t going away any time soon, so there is real merit in taking measures to prevent bullying from taking hold.

At the same time, there is increasing evidence of significant detrimental impact on personal and organisational performance. Indeed, more research from ACAS estimated the cost of workplace bullying to the UK economy as £18 billion.

In other words, for business to be successful, and for the economy to grow, this is an issue where increased awareness, and real efforts to curtail bullying, simply aren’t optional.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this subject, so please leave a comment, but if you’d like to discuss this topic more directly please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787.

Last Wednesday was World Mental Health Day 2018. The day aims to raise awareness of mental health and the issues around it, particularly those that arise from mental ILL-health.

I even put out a post on LinkedIn to publicise it, asking
followers of my posts “are you going to do anything to mark it?”.

At that stage, I was planning to write a blog post covering one of the ‘hot’ topics around mental health. I envisaged something that covered:

mental health being wider than mental illness

the need for employers to take work-related
stress (and other mental health issues) as seriously as they take physical
health & safety

the equal need for workers to also take
work-related stress (and other mental health issues) as seriously as they take
physical health & safety

the growing, and increasingly expensive, trend
towards presenteeism

etc.

It felt like it would be an article that would almost write
itself, with a wealth of research and worthy opinions to which I could refer.

But I didn’t write that article

OK, the immediate question is WHY didn’t I write the
article, but to answer that, I need to give some context.

Back when I was in my 20s, I went through a period of around
6 years during which I struggled seriously with depression. I started having strange emotional reactions
to events and situations, sometimes feeling almost numb to things that should
be upsetting, then finding a quiet corner to cry in over irrelevant small
events. I eventually recognised this
wasn’t right, and went to see my doctor, not sure what was wrong. He was excellent and openly explored both the
problem and my treatment options.

That’s not to say I felt down all the time

I found I could hide from the symptoms with adrenaline, so I flung myself into work projects and put in loads of unpaid overtime, because although I felt stressed, it felt normal to be stressed under that pressure. Indeed, I might have gone on like that for considerably longer had the project work not eased off.

Around this time, I remember a poster campaign by the
Samaritans that really struck a note.
There were 2 posters, one said “Can’t face going to work?”, the other “Can’t
face going home?”. At the moment I
noticed them, I recognised I was stuck in the limbo in between.

After resisting drug treatment for several months, I
eventually agreed to take antidepressants.
It took 3 attempts to find one that worked well enough and that didn’t
give me significant side-effects, but I realised I’d found the right one when,
after 3 weeks or so I woke up feeling ‘normal’.
It wasn’t uniform, but the world wasn’t the uniformly dark place it had
become and I started to re-emerge.
Luckily, I was able to re-engage with the talking therapies I’d already tried,
though this time I was able to understand and work through the underlying
reasons I felt the way I did.

It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t until I was well into my
recovery that I felt able to share with friends and colleagues what I was going
through. The fear of stigma has a basis
in reality, but the obstacles to being open seem insurmountable when you’re in
a ditch.

So, why didn’t I
write that article?

It’s simple. Although
I’ve recovered from my depression, and haven’t been there for more than 2
decades, there is a slippery slope towards mental ill-health that I have learnt
to recognise and avoid. The several days
running up to World Mental Health Day were crazy, with too much travelling, a
heavy workload and not enough down time to recover. I recognised that, to write it, I would have
to risk compromising my own mental health.

In the end, I made a pragmatic decision: I marked World
Mental Health Day by NOT writing that article.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this subject, so please leave a comment, but if you’d like to discuss this topic more directly please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787.

The Office of National Statistics has recently published its latest figures around industrial disputes, one of the highlights being the record low number of days lost to strikes, with a similar low for other forms of industrial action. So, does this trumpet the success of the Trade Union Act 2016? In short, no.

To those of us involved in industrial relations the latest figures are unlikely to come as much of a surprise. The statistics around strikes have been running at record lows for a number of years now. What IS strange is that, unless they have a record of doing so, many employers remain reluctant to engage constructively with unions. This often seems to their being wedded to views of the role and operation of unions that weren’t even that accurate in the 1970s, from whence they originate. Indeed, if you genuinely want to communicate with your staff, the structure and training they can gain through a union presence can make the process significantly easier and more efficient.

So why have I attached a picture Charles de Gaulle airport? Well, mainly because French Air Traffic Control is virtually synonymous with “on strike”, and I was drawn to a recent article examining industrial relations in France and how it relates to the UK. An interesting factor in France is that union membership is only around 8%, meaning that it’s really only union representatives who join. This phenomenon was examined in Economist magazine back in 2014:

…the real source of French union strength today is the statutory powers they enjoy as joint managers, along with business representatives, of the country’s health and social-security system, and as employee representatives in the workplace. Under French law, elected union delegates represent all employees, union members or not, in firms with over 50 staff on both works councils and separate health-and-safety councils. These must be consulted regularly by bosses on a vast range of detailed managerial decisions. This gives trade unions a daily say in the running of companies across the private sector, which accounts for the real strength of their voice.

So, in effect, people in France don’t join trade unions because they don’t need to, so long as there are enough people willing to act on their behalf.

Returning to the UK, there has been a long-term downward trend in unions taking strikes, one that was well established well before the Trade Union Act 2016 kicked in to make taking industrial action more difficult. For the last several decades, unions have been adapting to increasingly exacting legal requirements to take industrial action, meaning it is still perplexing why the TUA 2016 was put in place at all (and it remains unclear if it is consistent with human rights legislation which enshrines the right to withdraw labour). Unions’ main approach has been to become more effective at influencing, better prepared to be persuasive negotiators and of more constructive value to employers that are prepared to engage constructively with them.

I’m currently working with several clients, some of whom face difficulties engaging collectively with their workforce because they lack representative structures, and others that simply want to improve how they interact with their unions to the benefit of everyone in the company. The common theme is that, if you want to avoid disagreements with your staff, discuss things with them substantively and discuss them early and, ideally, draw out any ideas they can add. The better people understand the problem, the better they will understand the solution.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this subject, so please leave a comment, but if you’d like to discuss this topic more directly please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787.

This time last week I had just completed a traverse of the Cuillin Ridge on the Isle of Skye. Having returned to ‘normality’ and processed some of the reactions I had during the 32 hours we were on the mountains, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on how this relates to my work.

This was an expedition suggested by two of my school friends. We all grew up on Skye and have walked together on the Cuillin many times since we were children. However, in spite of having ‘done’ all of the Munros (Scottish Mountains higher than 3000 feet high) in the Cuillin, none of us had traversed the whole ridge, and it was about time that we did!

It was an exceptional experience, and one that affords a range of emotions and times for either concentration or reflection. In many ways, it’s an opportunity to undertake some sustained mindfulness practice: focusing on the rock when climbing, concentrating on staying upright on a steep slope while ignoring the 2000 foot drop should you miss your step, then marvelling at the view when you reach the top of the mountain are all great levellers. Life looks different from up there:

1. Perspective – it’s always useful to look at the world from a slightly different angle. Looking from one direction some of the ascents we made seemed impossible, but when we got to the right starting point there was usually a visible route. Also, someone else’s perspective of your problem can point to a much simpler solution than you can see yourself.2. Pushing beyond your comfort zone – this is often the best way to develop a bigger comfort zone. indeed, by the end of the second day of our traverse we were all significantly more comfortable on a near precipice than we had been starting out. That reminds me of the journey I’ve taken since starting my business two and a half years ago3. Trust yourself – sometimes the worst thing you can do is overthink. It can lead to indecision and unnecessary mistakes. Other times, the right move wasn’t obvious until we had to make it. Ultimately, which choice we made wasn’t as important as having the conviction to make it work!4. Will you achieve it alone? – appreciating when is the right time to ask for help can be as important as any other decision. We started by deciding we needed an experienced guide (the excellent Dave Fowler from Skye Guides). Climbing as a team of four meant we were constantly communicating with each other, and failing to do so would compromise the safety of the others, which led to smooth progress and none of us being too precious to ask for help, hints and tips. Similarly, many of my clients could have solved their problems more easily, and with less input from me, had they asked for help/advice sooner.5. Achievement is addictive – confronting that feeling that you can’t overcome an obstacle only to regroup and overcome it is a wonderful feeling. I think all of us reached this point over different challenges, be it a challenging move part way through a climb, toiling due to the heat (a bizarre problem to face climbing in Scotland!) or fatigue due to long term ‘exposure’ (i.e. having precipitous drops on all sides), and had to draw on each other and on our internal resources. The same happens in life all the time, but it’s too easy to miss the achievement of having solved what, to someone else, may be a relatively simple problem.6. Modern life can cause unforseen problems – climbing on gabro (the main rock that forms the Cuillin) causes some serious abrasion on your hands. My hands haven’t been so smooth and soft for years, but I haven’t been able to unlock my phone with my fingerprints since I came off the hill!7. New possibilities – lastly, and importantly, there’s nothing like a once in a lifetime experience to make you want to do it all again!

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this subject, so please leave a comment, but if you’d like to discuss this topic more directly please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787.

At the end of November I delivered a training course on Advanced Negotiation Skills. OK, that’s something I’ve done quite frequently over the years, but this course had a slight difference. This was the first course I’ve delivered as an Associate with CEDR.

It was wonderful working with my co-trainers: Andy Grossman has been delivering conflict resolution training with CEDR since “forever” (about 20 years) and has a wealth of experience; the third of our team was Phil Williams, a retired police officer who now specialises in delivering training around hostage and crisis negotiation.

Djøf delegates getting to grips with collective bargaining, November 2017

The trainees were all members of Danish organisation Djøf (the Danish Association of Lawyers and Economists), a trade union for lawyers, economists and a wide range of other skilled workers across all sectors. Trade unions are much stronger in Denmark that the UK, with around 67% of workers in membership. Indeed, the workforce takes a key role in the strategic direction of many businesses. As such, they operate at all levels of the business and often have a greater buy-in to business decisions than is the norm in the UK.

It was fascinating to see how the delegates worked through the course and embraced different aspects of negotiation. The emphasis was clearly on cooperation and people seemed genuinely uncomfortable even having to role-play situations where they had to hold a line and end up in conflict. Their explanation was that this is the Scandinavian way: being reasonable, finding the common ground and working towards a mutually beneficial outcome are second nature.

While Andy and Phil focused on negotiation theory, behaviour and motivation in negotiation, I focused on the collective aspects of negotiating in a workplace.

Like many unionised organisations in the UK, it’s common in Denmark for there to be multiple unions involved with an employer. To simulate that, we ran role-play scenarios where the delegates had to negotiate towards a pay agreement, given a range of restrictions and contradictions within which to find an outcome.

It was wonderful to see the range of approaches they came up with to present and justify their position, whether they were role-playing management or staff, and the enthusiasm with which they set about negotiating. Suffice to say, it was encouraging that all of the groups were able to achieve their objectives and came away with a greater understanding of the challenges ahead when faced with real collective bargaining situations.

All in all, from a training delivery perspective, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience!

Malcolm Currie

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the topics raised in this article, so please leave a comment or, if you’d like to discuss anything more directly, please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787.

Most of my blogs have been about topics in the news that I find interesting, or on which I’d like to provoke a little debate, but this time round I thought I’d take a slightly different approach and reach out to people who, like me, run or work for small/micro businesses for whom sickness absence can be a massive headache.

Those of you who know me will be aware that I’m an “egg chaser”, a “spoiler of rugby matches”, or whatever other term you like to use to say that I referee rugby matches, something I took up after recovering from a dislocated knee and a rebuild when the ligaments ruptured. I also like to cycle, run, climb mountains and do all sorts of other activities that have, over the years, taken a physical toll.

Over recent months, my knee had become increasingly painful to the point that, a few weeks ago, I found myself missing a train because I wasn’t able to run/walk fast enough from platform to platform to catch the connection. This brought home that I needed some sort of medical intervention or I was going to end up not able to work, and therein comes the point of this blog.

Since I went self-employed, I have become painfully (sic!) aware that if I’m not working, I’m not earning. Worse, because my business is relatively young, I don’t have a track record against which to claim appropriate lost earnings on my insurance (without the said insurance being prohibitively expensive).

So, what should I do?

I was already aware of Healthy Working Lives though having worked with an employer who needed their advice in making reasonable adjustments for a disabled employee (another of the services available). However, in this case, I am more specifically describing the support they can provide for self-employed people or those working in small and medium enterprises, where possible preventing people from going off sick when an early medical intervention might keep them working.

For a small/micro business, the benefit of these approaches is 2-fold:

the individual doesn’t lose income when they needn’t have done;

the business doesn’t lose capacity to deliver for clients/customers.

This runs alongside Fit for Work (operating as Fit for Work Scotland north of the border), a UK-wide initiative aimed at getting people back to work quicker and “reduce the impact that absence has on individuals, employers and the State”, the main difference seeming to be that Fit for Work focuses more on people who are already off work.

How does it work?

Well, for me it involved me contacting the Healthy Working Lives advice line (0800 019 2211), answering a few simple questions about my working situation and the nature of the illness, then waiting for contact back. The result was that I had an appointment with an NHS physiotherapist in less than a week, and, with her guidance, I’ve started a rehabilitation programme that should address the problem and stop it from developing to a stage that prevents me from working. And if the programme doesn’t work, I’ll be referred to a Consultant who can review anything else that needs to be done.

It’s the second time I’ve needed to use the service since I started my own business, and my experience both times has been very similar, I got the medical support I needed when I needed it and avoided lost time off sick. I mentioned this at a meeting of my local Chamber of Commerce last year and was amazed that I seemed to be the only SME owner who was aware of it, so I thought I’d share a bit wider that such a service exists.

I’d be interested to hear any other hints/tips that anyone out there might have, so please share them if you can.

Uber, Deliveroo and Pimlico Plumbers have all been answering legal questions about the legitimacy of a business model that sees them, and other companies, claiming the people work for them are self-employed, so they don’t have to pay Employers’ National Insurance, pension, holidays, sick leave, etc., as their competitors do. At the outset, Taylor commented that there were areas into which he wasn’t tasked to delve (tax & National Insurance, for example), so it hasn’t, perhaps, been the free and open review that had been called for by many.

There are, however, several aspects that are unlikely to go down well with factions of the Conservative government. Speaking in May, Taylor said:

“As we encourage people to vote . . . to inform themselves of issues, to volunteer in their community, is it defensible to say that for eight or more hours a day they should accept being ignored, denied information, treated as mere cogs in a machine?”

That could easily be interpreted as a call to reverse moves by the Cameron Government to apply cumulative restrictions to the ability of trade unions to provide that voice. It could also be that Theresa May’s surprise decision to announce in November:

“…we will shortly publish our plans to reform corporate governance, including … proposals to ensure the voice of employees is heard in the boardroom.”

might actually come to fruition, though there has been precious little mention of the radical reforms of employment law mentioned in the run-up to the general election.

However, it also suggests that implementation of the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004 (ICER) hasn’t had the impact that it could and should have had. Certainly, many trade union activists viewed ICER with suspicion, partly because merely informing and consulting can achieve relatively little without scope for negotiation. Similarly, some employers saw it as a way to prevent unions from getting access to their workplace. However, those opinions have been changing over time, as demonstrated by the TUC’s “Democracy in the Workplace” report from 2014. There is considerable evidence that employers that actively engage with their staff are more successful than those that don’t:

Many were calling for a simplification of the categories, preventing confusion over whether people are employees, workers or self-employed: instead, Taylor seems to be recommending that a further category is introduced, that of “Dependent Contractor”, something more than self-employed, clearly less than a worker, but that is presumably intended to level the playing field.

Quite how the Government will react to the findings is, frankly, anyone’s guess, especially with the level of distraction coming from Brexit, May’s increasingly slender majority, rumoured challenges for the Tory leadership (and, hence, the job of Prime Minister) and Labour apparently surging ahead of the Conservatives for the first time since the General Election, it’ll be a real surprise if they turn to this as a matter of urgency. But it is the response of Government to these findings that will determine whether or not they make a positive difference for employers and those they employ.

Instead, attention will again be drawn to Uber’s fortunes in the Employment Appeals Tribunal in September.

From where I’m sitting, one answer is in the hands of every employer; improve your working relationship with your staff and, in turn, make the business more productive and more profitable. That’s an area where I would certainly like to help.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the issues raised in this article, so please leave a comment or, if you’d like to discuss anything more directly, please contact me at malcolm@strathesk.co.uk or give me a call on 07736068787.